


Boundless

by StevetheIcecube



Category: The Legend of Zelda & Related Fandoms
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Alternate Universe - Soulmates, Friends to Lovers, M/M, Sheikah, Slow Burn, Trans Male Character
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-12-02
Updated: 2019-08-03
Packaged: 2019-09-05 16:25:14
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 11,949
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16814233
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/StevetheIcecube/pseuds/StevetheIcecube
Summary: My love for you is boundlessAnd it travels many pathsI pray that it will reach youBut I fear we'll never passI feel you in my spiritAnd I see you in my soulBut the world around us twistedTill the land began to fall-These words have echoed inside Sheik for many years, and he was never able to express them. Even after he met the 'one', his soul partner, things weren't solved. In fact, on meeting his partner, ever more questions began to surface, and answering them was only going to get harder.





	1. Predictions

My love for you is boundless  
And it travels many paths  
I pray that it will reach you  
But I fear we'll never pass  
I feel you in my spirit  
And I see you in my soul  
But the world around us twisted  
Till the land began to fall

He tapped his pen against the desk. No, the words weren't right. He knew them off by heart by now, and in the mind they flowed. But when he pressed them to the page they no longer looked right. He glanced around and traced the symbols silently - those were right.

This was useless. He knew what would be right and he knew what would be wrong but if he was caught with those words here, he didn’t know what they’d do. They’d never be nice about it, because they never were. They would...he sighed. The world around us twisted. They’d berate him for words like that anyway.

He didn’t know where the words came from, even. He screwed the piece of paper up into a ball and lit it on fire, but not before writing the symbols down on the page. He’d done that so many times now, in an attempt to maybe some day create a phrasing of the words that would make sense outside of the old magic language, but he never could.

In his mind’s eye, he could never see them. Her. The girl who would cross his path one day, maybe, if he was lucky. She should, anyway. But whether she would was another matter. Paths crossing was getting rarer and rarer and considering the life he led, well, he wasn’t sure if he’d ever find her.

But in his imagination, he could see her. Tall, muscular, beautiful. She’d probably have light hair, light eyes. They’d meet at an event. Both of them in this situation, yet neither of them had met yet. And then they’d get on instantly, and see each other maybe every other day. And then they’d...they’d have the future together that all people had once they met the person inscribed into their soul.

He crossed his legs and closed his eyes, and thought through the words again. His love for them...he’d been on a similar path before, maybe. It was altogether common now, now the world was so old, and so many went back hundreds or thousands of years. And they’d been together for so long, across so many ages, that it was second nature for him to love them. Her.

At the same time, maybe he’d never meet her. Maybe their paths would never cross. Because the world was such a separate place these days. Then again, the person who was meant for him could only run in these circles too, surely? She would have to live in this neighbourhood. High above the streets. They had to. She had to.

There was no use thinking like this, thinking himself into knots like always. He had studies to complete, work to do, things to achieve. He didn’t have time for being absent-minded, constantly consumed by this feeling in his soul that something was stirring, something was going to happen-

It had been going on for weeks now. When he’d first encountered it, for a few moments he had felt it was something wrong with his heart. Then he thought that someone was trying to brush against his soul to gain information somehow, and he’d thrown up his guards and it still hadn’t gone away.

That was when he’d looked it up, and he’d found out what was going on. His soul, so old and repeating the same words over and over again, had finally felt something changing. Something was moving forward, after all seventeen years of his life where the person so familiar didn’t come close.

And ever since then he’d been restless. Knowing they were coming. That she was coming. And soon everything would change. At first he’d locked himself in his room, having a minor crisis about a new chapter that was surely about to begin. And then he’d realised that maybe locking himself in and not speaking to new people would just keep the person away. So he’d gone to everything and then he got exhausted and about now everything was settling back to being normal.

He was so ready for things to change. He was ready to meet them. Her. But at the same time he was almost terrified. Because his mind didn’t default to her, didn’t default to a woman in his imagination who he already knew. He already knew who the perfect person should be. He knew off by heart what the perfect soul partner would look like for him, who everyone was expecting her to be.

His mind didn’t default to a Sheikah warrior of the upper classes who he’d just happened to not stumble upon yet. His mind didn’t default to anyone in particular at all. And that scared him. It scared him that the person his soul was familiar with was...flexible. There wasn’t a familiar role for the pair of them to play in an ever-changing world.

That was exciting and scary and Sheik was so, so ready for it.


	2. Meeting

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> There was a figure standing in the world below, and that’s when he realised why his whole mind didn’t resonate with what it was meant to. Because there was a figure standing in the world below, looking up at him with dark blue eyes.

Two weeks longer, he stayed with his soul fluttering at every moment. Two weeks, he went to moderate numbers of social events where there would be new people, hoping that maybe at some point he would enter a room and his feet would gravitate to places he had never even imagined.

But then all of that changed. Because after two weeks, he was out in the courtyard sketching the streets far, far below. The curve of the buildings, the shock of colour that burst into the sky. The greyness of the world below, but also its vitality, in a strange, strange way. And he was looking out, down from the platform that was there specifically to watch from, and his soul jumped.

He didn’t know how he knew it had jumped because the thing inside of him that was full of the past wasn’t meant to move. It didn’t often even have sensations, unless he was using a lot of magic. It was just there. Things had been static for so long that any sense of recognition came from his brain and from nowhere else. But this...this was new. And he somehow knew what it was.

There was a figure standing in the world below, and that’s when he realised why his whole mind didn’t resonate with what it was meant to. Because there was a figure standing in the world below, looking up at him with dark blue eyes. Looking up at him through the tinted glass that meant no one below could see him. So that person couldn’t see him, but knew he was there, which meant-

Sheik didn’t know what to do. But his body acted without his brain catching up and before he knew it, he was racing down the stairs that would take him to the nearest exit to the lower level of the city. His heart was beating so fast it hurt and his thoughts couldn’t catch up with what was going on. This was...this was the person whose side he was meant to stand by for the rest of his life. This was the person that his soul knew so well that they could feel each other from a fair distance apart. This person could feel him so strongly that they’d been able to sense him and look at him without even seeing him.

When he reached street level, the person was standing at the base of the steps. Just looking up at him. He didn’t know what to do now. He’d spent half his life thinking about this moment and now he had no idea what to do because whoever this person was, they weren’t who he was expecting. Normal people weren't meant to have ancient souks. Only people with magic, and magic was...it wasn’t for people down here.

“Come on,” he said, hurriedly beckoning the person towards the stairs. The person just looked at him, and Sheik knew what they were thinking instantly. They couldn’t go up there because that wasn’t what people from down here did. “It’s fine,” he said. “You’re with me. And I don’t think I’m meant to be down here any more than you’re meant to be up there.”

The person shook their head, but they were looking at the steps with a strange expression. And then they looked back at Sheik. They still hadn’t said anything, but this close, Sheik could see them a lot better. They were short, shorter than him, which wasn’t much of a surprise really but Sheik wasn’t exactly tall for his age. Their clothes were dirty, their shoes were muddy, and they had a hood pulled up over their hair so Sheik couldn’t even see more than a couple of wisps.

“Please?” He said. The person hesitated once more, and then nodded. Sheik couldn’t help but grin. There was something just...right about what was happening now. “Great,” he said. “It’s not far from these steps to my quarters so we’ll just go in there. No one will care what I’m doing.”

The person still looked hesitant, and still said nothing, but they moved towards and then up the stairs. Sheik couldn’t help but turn back to look at them every couple of seconds. This was...he hadn’t felt so natural in such a long time. Was this what it was meant to be like? Things were still awkward, so awkward, between the two of them, and somehow he didn’t think that would change any time soon.

There was a gap between them which was pretty much perfectly shown by the way they’d met. This person hadn’t even been able to see him, and then they’d had to be encouraged to even step into the world Sheik lived in. There was a gap in their status, their lives, the experiences they may have shared. Sheik didn’t even know what living on the surface level was like - that brief moment there had been the first time he’s gone down there in years.

He didn’t know why the person who had just made his soul sing looked so furtive as they walked through the corridors; they were both perfectly entitled to be here. There was nothing stopping someone from the surface coming up here if they could just get through the door. This person wasn’t doing anything wrong. In fact, they were doing something so right because this was how it was meant to be.

As usual, they made it to Sheik’s rooms without encountering anyone, because of course they did. Why would they not? No one ever came out over here. No one cared enough to check on him because he was old enough to look after himself - only if he missed an appointment would someone start to worry, and while Sheik didn’t really like it that way, it was definitely good for this purpose and making his guest (could they be called a guest?) feel more comfortable.

When Sheik closed the door to his room, the person opposite him visibly relaxed. But they still didn’t say anything. Sheik bit his lip. Were they shy? Awkward? Unsure of how to act because of their discrepancy in status? “You can- I think we can- I mean, we can- we can talk now,” he said.

The person nodded. Shifted awkwardly on their feet. “My Hylian is bad,” they mumbled, in a voice somehow higher than what Sheik was expecting. They had an accent he didn’t recognise.

“What do you speak?” He asked. He just...wanted to have a conversation with them. Get to know them again. In a new way, in a way that maybe his soul hadn’t encountered before, or maybe it had.

“I am from Faron,” they said. “I speak Faron, and Sheikah.”

“Oh!” Was it normal to speak Sheikah if you weren’t Sheikah in other places? The whole idea of that was practically forbidden here. Sheikah as a language came with an expensive education, so naturally he spoke it, but he didn’t know many Hylians who did. “How long have you been here? Most people up here,” he gestured to the room around him, hoping they got the message, “speak Sheikah.”

The person’s eyes lit up a little, though there was still no hint of a smile. They looked worried, and Sheik just...wanted them to not be afraid. “I’ve been here for a month,” they said. Their Sheikah still had that accent that Sheik couldn’t detect, but it was fine. He’d find out soon enough.

“That’s…” Sheik’s hand ghosted a symbol above their chest, and the person’s eyes immediately fell to his hands. That had been when his soul started reacting to...well, now he knew what it had been reacting to, he supposed. “That’s cool. How do you like it here?”

“It’s loud,” the person said. “Really loud, and really busy. Faron is smaller, with more trees. It’s better.”

Sheik tried not to be offended by that, because he liked the city and he loved the place where he lived. He loved Hyrule, and he loved Castle Town, the way it soared above the clouds in places and how huge everything was, how bright and colourful, just everything about it. He’d never really been to the countryside much, but when he had he remembered it being boring.

“It’s not so loud up here,” they continued. “It’s far away. And you don’t have to see all the bad things happening down below.”

Okay, Sheik would admit that what had been said there was possibly the case. He didn’t get to see much of the world that most of the citizens of Castle Town lived and worked in. BUt it couldn't be that bad, could it? The country was prosperous and living standards as a whole were good.

Maybe this wasn’t the best thing to talk about in their first meeting. “You’re probably right,” he said, and tried to leave it at that. “I’m sorry, I’ve been really rude. What’s your name? I’m Sheik.” They snorted. Sheik shot them a small glare. “Look, I know,” he said. “It’s a very Sheikah name. And yes, there are six people I know who were born in the same year as me who have that name alone.”

“I’m Link,” they said. “Which is a boy’s name in Faron, just so you-”

“It’s a boy’s name here, too,” Sheik said. “Is that- is that okay? So we’re-”

“Yes,” he said, and that was all Sheik needed to hear. So much for the tall Sheikah warrior girl. So much for being normal and leading a normal life with the person who matched his soul. “Yeah, we are. Didn’t you know?”

“No,” he admitted. Maybe he’d just been in denial for so long, but he’d always felt like the gender of the person who was meant to be with him was constantly in flux over the ages, so even his soul hadn’t quite figured out what it was going to be this time. “Did you?”

“Not really,” Link said. “For so many years I thought you’d be a girl. It’s a weird feeling, but it sort of settled as I came here. Like when I was closer, my anima figured it out.”

“You probably shouldn’t- say that kind of thing here,” Sheik said, glancing around. There was no one here. There was never anyone here. But talking about old magic always got people on edge. Always had people second guessing you.

“Wow, Hyrule really is bad,” he said, and Sheik couldn’t help but laugh nervously. The boy pulled the dirtied hood from his face, revealing that he was...younger than Sheik had expected, somehow. He’d always imagined being an adult and meeting an adult when he finally met the person who matched his soul. He’d also imagined a warrior, and Link was anything but.

Sheik couldn’t help but get distracted by his eyes for a moment. They were blue. Very, very blue. And deep, and tired and pointedly avoiding his direct gaze. “Have you been out on the streets?” He asked.

Link nodded. “At least it’s not too cold here!” He said cheerfully. “But yeah, I haven’t really had enough money to find anywhere to sleep properly because I don’t speak Hylian. No one’s interested in employing my skill set when there are fancy, well-educated Sheikah around to do all that stuff already.”

“Magic?” Sheik asked. He’d never met a Hylian who could do magic. Were people from Faron Hylians? He couldn’t remember, even though he should remember because that was sort of elemental geography. He’d never been good with those kinds of facts and now was the one time they actually mattered.

Link nodded. “I guess you don’t really get mercenaries here. All your foundations are so strong, the city so fortified, you don’t need people to go killing monsters or go out hunting.”

“How technologically advanced is Faron?” Sheik asked. That really was...mercenaries? They hadn’t even had a militia for a century.

“Not particularly,” he said with a shrug. “There aren’t many people, or much money. The mines are miles from where I live so no one from where I lived even worked there.”

Sheik had to admit, he was enraptured by what an interesting person Link was. How was he just so...cool? He had an interesting life where he’d been out in the world meeting different people and using magic and training in all kinds of pursuits. He’d been living on his own, which meant he had life skills, and what had Sheik been doing? Attempting to write poetry about someone he’d never met in a language the words didn’t really translate to.

“I guess here is very different,” he said. Link nodded. “So you...were in a mercenary group? Like in the old stories?”

Link laughed. “I worked solo,” he said. “Freelance, I guess you could call it. I think that’s the modern term for being self employed.”

“And you killed monsters?” This was just so endlessly fascinating. Sheik wanted to learn everything about Link’s life immediately. He’d never felt quite like this before when talking to people. That was always about feigned interest, and casually guarding yourself so people didn’t understand fully what was going on in your life while knowing that everyone around you was doing exactly the same thing.

“Well, primarily I helped herd cattle and bring the harvest in,” he said with a small smile. “But yes, if there were monster problems, I’d fight monsters. I gave the kids lessons in swordplay and archery.”

There was something about the tone of his voice that Sheik couldn't quite understand, but it intrigued him all the same. Link had done all these things, yet he couldn’t be that much older than Sheik. And the way he spoke, he worked for the people of the place he lived. Was that...a fun experience? Was he part of their group, or did they just pay him because they needed someone? Sheik couldn’t imagine Link not fitting in with a group of people, but then...he didn’t know. It sounded like there were other things going on.

“What about you?” Link asked. “Your name is Sheik and you’re obscenely rich.” Sheik was about to open his mouth and object, but then he realised that Link didn’t have any money at all, to the extent that he was sleeping on the streets. Almost any Sheikah living in Hyrule would seem obscenely rich to him, and some of the Hylians too. “But what else?”

“Um, I’m seventeen, and I live up on this level of the city,” he said. There was nothing interesting he could say about himself, honestly. He wasn’t a very interesting person compared to someone with real life experience. “I think I’m meant to be important one day but no one ever tells me why?”

“People are like that sometimes,” Link said. “They hide things from us. Because hiding things gives you knowledge that other people don’t have and that gives you power.”

“What do people hide from you, do you think?” He asked.

“Nothing, not anymore,” Link said. There was a note of finality in his tone that made Sheik blink. He didn’t know what that meant. Did Link know something he didn’t want to say? Had he done something he didn’t want to talk about? “It’s...complicated. And I will tell you. But not here. Here is...they’re not open with you here. There are things they don’t let you do. And that makes me think they’re not telling you things because they don’t want you to know, so they won’t want me telling you either.”

“That doesn’t make sense,” Sheik said. It was infuriating. Link had just said that keeping information from people was bad but then he’d done this. He’d said that he just wouldn’t tell. And that just made him a bit of a hypocrite, honestly.

“They don’t want you to know things,” Link said. “And I want you to know about the thing I found out because I trust you for some reason which is a whole other thing I know I’m meant to do but I’m still suspicious of it. And it feels like everything has changed but it shouldn’t have. There are secrets here and if someone found out I was telling you more secret things I don’t know if I’d be welcome here. I may not be welcome here anyway.”

Sheik nodded. He sort of understood, but it was still annoying. “Does that mean we need to find somewhere else?” He asked. Logically, technically, there was...there was outside the city. They could go out there. Or they could not do that because it was probably dangerous and getting out and back in again would be hard but… Sheik didn’t know. Maybe it was worth it.

“Anywhere, probably,” Link said with a shrug. “Somewhere out on the streets where no one is listening in, and if they are listening in they won’t care. Are you allowed to go down to the street level and just go places?”

“I think so,” Sheik said. “I’ve been told that it can be dangerous, but if you’re a swordsman like the Link from the stories and all of that-”

“Getting a sword out here would be a really bad idea,” Link said with a grin. “I’d just ask you for some help in setting them on fire. You do have magic training, right?”

“Yes,” he said. Magic training was the one thing that he was always meant to hide from other people. He was allowed to do magic, sort of. He was meant to practise, but he wasn’t meant to leave any trace of it in case people traced it back to him, but he didn’t know why people weren’t meant to know about magic. Loads of Sheikah could do magic! He knew that. He just didn’t know which ones could. Or how well. It was all so hidden.

“Then we can set anyone who tries to attack you on fire. But they probably wouldn’t, as long as you had something to obscure those eyes. Otherwise you’re indistinguishable from any Hylian who wears sort of fancy clothes. I’m presuming you have normal clothes?”

“You talk a lot,” Sheik said, and Link laughed nervously. “I have normal clothes. I was just wearing this because it’s comfy and I wasn’t anticipating going outside today.”

“I don’t normally talk a lot,” he said. “But I guess I have stuff to say now and it’s all pouring out.”

“It’s sort of cute,” Sheik said, and then he realised what he’d said and blushed. He’d just called this person he’d only met very recently cute and he wasn’t even cute he was just...mysterious. And interesting and intriguing and when his hands went everywhere and he spoke quickly in that strange accent it was...yeah, it was kind of cute.

And Sheik knew that you weren’t meant to be romantic with your soul pair if your soul pair was the same gender as you because Sheikah were sort of rare and you had to have children or they’d probably all die out at some point and Link was neither female nor a Hylian and...he knew all that. He knew that he shouldn’t be thinking stuff like that about Link.

But he couldn’t help it. His soul had finally touched with the person it recognised more than any other, and everything from here...Sheik didn’t know if he’d be able to control how he felt. Even though control was meant to be one of the Sheikah things, he didn’t know if controlling feelings for his soul partner was even a good thing.

Ah, well. He’d just have to cross that bridge when he came to it. Or maybe not cross the bridge at all. He didn’t know and this was such a bizarre feeling all at once but...this was more exciting than his life had ever been, even if it was scary too.


	3. Venture

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Link and Sheik leave Sheik's home so Link can tell him what's really going on.

Link didn’t understand what was going on, if he was honest. He’d come here because someone had told him that his anima adelfi would never be back home in Faron - he’d already met most of the people with old anima and everything still felt so far away. And Zelda lived in Hyrule, after all, and who else would be his anima adelfi?

The prospect had scared him immensely. Being Link, that Link, had been nothing other than a shock to him. Link was a common name in his village - there were four people in the village not even including him called Link. It was only when he’d been called away by the roaming Sheikah tribe and trained and introduced to so many things he’d never even been able to imagine before he realised that things were so much bigger than him.

The appearance of the hero led to disaster in Hyrule. He knew that, the Sheikah knew that, everyone knew that, once they’d found out that he really was that Link. The one from the legends who was constantly reborn and constantly fought, constantly died, constantly battled...Link couldn’t help but feel responsible for what would inevitably happen, because of course it would happen. Maybe not yet, but soon. Soon, something bad would happen. And it was because he existed.

He’d been scared of it, so scared, so he’d stayed away from going to Hyrule. He’d put it off, just hoping that it would never happen, honestly. If he didn’t go to Hyrule then Hyrule wouldn’t get hurt so he wouldn’t have to destroy it. Yet two years later when the monsters came to his home and stole the children away and he went to fight them, he’d seen something. Something...he still wasn’t sure what it had been, really, but he’d told the Sheikah elder and he’d told the seer and they told him that he needed to go to Hyrule.

So he hadn’t even been able to go back to the village where he had been raised to grab the supplies he’d promised he’d take with him. He took some Sheikah items and left on the next boat because he’d worried there had been no time to sapre.

And then he stayed in Hyrule for a month before anything even happened. H didn’t get to see Zelda because why would a common boy from Faron ever see Zelda? No one could know that there was a hero or that this Zelda was a real Zelda, because that would make everyone panic. It might make the ruin come faster, or make it harder to crawl back from, and no one wanted thar. So he hadn’t been able to meet the person who was ‘surely his anima adelfi’.

He met Sheik and everything was different. He didn’t know what had happened or why it was Sheik and no one knew about Sheik. Why did no one know about Sheik if it was so common for him, common enough that the moment he looked into Sheik’s eyes everything felt right and he recognised this boy he’d never met? Why was it not known that the hero Link was always at the side of a Sheikah?

It was scary, if he was being honest. Sheik was living alone in a world where everything about the truth was being hidden from him and he had the feeling that the reason was that Link was his anima adelfi. Which meant that someone knew about this already and had kept it from him, kept it from all the people who may one day tell him and that was dangerous.

It didn’t help that this whole situation was going to be dangerous at some point. Ruin would come to Hyrule and he’d be at Sheik’s side for at least part of it, surely, and Sheik was...sequestered up there. He had no idea why the Sheikah were kept apart here, but it certainly wasn't going to help in a combat situation. He knew that the Sheikah trained their children regardless of where they lived, but all the combat training in the world wouldn’t change that Sheik had no knowledge of the outside world.

This was going to be hard and Link was afraid. Not just for himself, and he was definitely afraid for himself because why would he not be? He had to live up to the mantle set on the hero for hundred and hundreds of years now and not fall. And not fail too badly, either, or even not succeed badly. Because Hyrule still had to continue after he saved it and they’d built up a lot after the last complete ruin.

It was a mess, basically, and he couldn’t sort his jumbled thoughts about it out at all. Why would he know how to solve the mess when people were keeping facts from him? Why did it have to be him? Everytime he thought about it, his thoughts spiralled. They spiralled so badly until he was too afraid even to move.

Seeing Sheik had been the first time he’d felt like something was going right here. Watching Sheik, listening to Sheik, taking to Sheik, it was calming in a way Link had never experienced before and that was almost scary. He didn’t get it. He didn't trust it, just like how he’d told Sheik. He was meant to trust it, and he did trust Sheik, but he didn’t trust the sensation that was making him trust Sheik because he had no idea where it came from other than magic and magic wasn’t always good.

He watched as Sheik pulled some trousers on under the light tunic he was wearing, over the leggings. Did Sheik even realise how warm it was outside on the streets, where the pavement was cracking because of how warm it was? Did he even understand climate? Sheik pulled a jumper on over the tunic (another bad decision), and then held a jacket out to him.

“Did you want to wear something that isn’t dirty?” Sheik asked. “I have plenty of clothes and you’re not that much broader than me…” Sheik was a lot broader at the shoulders than Link was. He was also taller. Link didn’t know how Sheik hadn’t noticed that, but his level of ignorance about everything was honestly more concerning than it was endearing. Then again, it was very endearing in this situation so Link should probably stop thinking about the apocalypse and start thinking about how he was going to explain this to Sheik.

“It’s really warm out there,” he said. Sheik blinked.

“Just take off your hoodie and take the jacket, then?” Sheik asked. “Come on, I feel bad. I have lots of clothes I never wear and you must have been wearing that for ages.” He looked and sounded so earnest, it was sort of sweet. Looking at him again, Link shrugged and then nodded, pulling the hoodie up over his head and letting Sheik toss him the jacket. It was nice to not have to wear that, at least for a bit.

Sheik grinned at him. “Now we’re set,” he said. “Do you know where we’re going?”

“I don’t have anywhere in particular in mind,” Link said. “We’ll just have to find somewhere as we go. Do you know anywhere?”

“I’d always go here to talk privately,” Sheik admitted, showing his ignorance again. There was something about this place. Link could feel it watching him, somehow, judging him, and while he knew from what Sheik had said that he was mostly left on his own, he couldn’t shake the feeling that someone might suddenly burst in on them if they talked about this.

“Here definitely isn’t right,” he said. He knew it was sort of cruel to pull Sheik away from the area he was familiar with, he’d seen how uncomfortable Sheik was even in that brief moment outside of where he usually lived. And that was when Sheik had a real, pressing reason to go out there.

“I know,” Sheik said with a sigh. He glanced around the room. “Are you sure we can’t?” He asked.

“It would be a lot safer not to,” he said. “Come on, you said we were all set. So let’s get walking and we can work out where we’re going once we’re out there. No sense in just sticking around in here.”

Sheik nodded, but it was clearly a grudging agreement. Link felt bad again, but this was important and all of this stuff was just going to get more important; it was vital that he told Sheik and the one thing he really had to do was get this right.

They walked in silence along the short couple of corridors that they needed to traverse to get to the steps down again, Sheik very clearly nervously fidgeting with just about everything he got his hands on. Link was tempted to stick his hand out and let him keep at least one hand occupied, but he didn’t know how Sheik would feel about that.

To him, it had always been very clear what his anima adelfi would be to him. He supposed it was the way he was brought up, but everyone who had anima adelfi they’d found at home lived with and loved that anima adelfi. That’s just how it was. It was mostly the Sheikah tribe he’d spent time with, but there were other families scattered around who had anima adelfi forming the core of the unit.

It was odd to think of it all that way, Link admitted, after only just having met Sheik. The only thing he’d really been able to think about was sizing Sheik up to see if he was a fighter, what he was probably good at, if he was aware enough of his surroundings. Working out how to keep him alive for long enough to get to the next bit that might focus on their relationship beyond practicalities.

It wasn’t that he didn’t want to think about it; he had always been aware of how it was going to be, and that meant he’d spent a likely unhealthy amount of time thinking about and imagining all kinds of situations which would involve him and his anima adelfi and how they would meet and how everything would pan out in their relationship.

When he was little, he’d sketched it all out. They’d meet, and it wouldn’t be love at first sight because that wasn’t how it worked, but his anima adelfi would be attractive and they’d keep meeting up and then they’d go on little outings together and be really close and it would just be like a good relationship that built up naturally with something special between the two of them.

As time had gone on, Link had been forced to incorporate the destruction of Hyrule and the subsequent saving of it into that fairytale narrative. It didn’t work quite as well after that. Even though the story of the hero and Zelda had been a constant one that could be charted in its many different forms over the ages, he’d never been able to fit a good narrative into that that felt even remotely right to him.

Now, of course, he realised why that was; he was never meant to fit into a narrative with Zelda. That raised all kinds of questions that he was really starting to worry about at this point, though he knew he had to stop. He had to focus on now and stop focusing too hard on the future because the future was scary enough as it was without throwing into it all these discussions of why it wasn’t Zelda that he would be with for the rest of his life.

The streets were busy, and Sheik immediately looked overwhelmed when they stepped out onto them. Link felt bad instantly. He knew that Sheik was sheltered, but surely he’d been in a crowd before? Link hadn’t really considered that his desensitisation to all of this had only happened fairly recently and he couldn’t expect Sheik to feel the same way, not knowing his circumstances.

“Is this okay?” Link asked, lowering his voice even though the noise around them was louder than it had been up there. He knew Sheik’s hearing was keen, anyway, from the way Sheik reacted to far off noises when they’d been standing in his rooms together.

“Yes,” Sheik said, though his response even then was fairly shaky. “I’ll be fine. I’m not used to being down here and it feels a bit like I’m doing something wrong because I’ve always been told it isn’t really safe.”

“You’re perfectly safe,” Link said. “There are law enforcement officers everywhere if you go anywhere even remotely shady, it’s fine. I’m just trying to think of somewhere particularly safe, quiet, and empty so we can talk.”

“Okay,” Sheik said. He went back to fiddling with the hem of his jacket. It was sort of distracting and it felt...wrong, to watch Sheik in this kind of sort of distress, but Link knew it was unavoidable. He had to tell Sheik about this as soon as possible in the right way and a bit of discomfort was worth it.

Especially, the back of his mind told him, because Sheik wouldn’t be sitting in a comfortable spot for the rest of his life. Seeing the way the Sheikah of Hyrule sat at the top of society with everyone else suffering down below told Link a fair amount about who would be the people who fell the furthest because of the destruction that was going to come.

He sighed. He had to stop thinking about what was going to come because it just got him down and it was all he could think about all the time sometimes and that just wasn’t good. But he couldn’t stop thinking about it because it was so important that he felt like he needed to plan for it all the time and-

“Link, are you okay?” Sheik asked. He caught Link’s shoulder and pulled him to a stop. “You look really worried. Is something going on? I’m sure we can talk here.”

Link looked around. People were walking around, minding their own business, maybe staring a bit because the two of them had just stopped in the middle of a busy pedestrian thoroughfare, but once they started moving again it would be fine. Ugh, he should have been watching to check if anyone had been following them at all, except he didn’t really know how to do that when there were so many people around them.

Argh, this would have to do. “Sure, as long as we can keep walking,” he said. Then his mind finally managed to clear and he remembered where he’d originally planned on heading. The park, of course, because it was such a wide expanse and it was normal to never run into other people there, even on the path.

“Are we headed east?” Sheik asked, glancing almost worryingly at the sun. What was he concerned about? Was there something else he’d been told about this area that Link didn’t know about?

“I think so,” he said. “Why? Is there something wrong?”

“No,” Sheik said quickly. “I just haven’t been out here past dark before so it’s a bit...sorry. It’ll be fine, I know, because you’re here with me, I just got a bit worried. Let’s keep going.”

“We won’t be too long,” Link said. The park probably wasn’t the nicest of places to be after dark, anyway. The shelter of the trees attracted plenty of people who had been moved on from buildings, especially when it was this hot, and that attracted all kinds of things at time, not least police looking for someone if they fancied bullying some homeless people again.

“Okay,” Sheik said with a shrug, and they started walking again. Sheik was walking a little closer this time, but Link didn’t say anything because the other boy seemed on edge enough already. “It’s really hot out.”

“I did warn you,” he said, chuckling slightly. He knew Sheik hadn’t exactly thought he was lying or anything, but it was sort of funny anyway. “It’s been really hot for the last couple of weeks. Way too hot, honestly.”

“It gets this hot every year,” Sheik said, shrugging again. Link wondered if shrugging was normal for rich Sheikah in Hyrule or if that was just how Sheik decided to communicate most of his sentiments. “People complain all the time because it’s been drying up the plains.”

“You mean the Zora have been complaining?” Link asked. He knew the answer to this question; he just wanted to see if Sheik knew.

“We don’t get them complaining here anymore,” Sheik said. “It’s...too dry in the summer. So they go into the caves and don’t come out, waiting until late autumn to start venturing out again. It’s sort of sad, but I understand why. No one was doing anything about it.”

Link nodded. When he was with the Sheikah tribe, they’d travelled all over, and one of the places they’d gone to was the mountain where the Zoras lived in his region, and they said that they had all kinds of family and friends who were practically trapped in Hyrule caves due to the heat. It had been getting worse every year, but the water always replenished to the previous level so there wasn’t really much that could be done. Or so the Hyrulian government claimed, anyway. Link doubted that.

They reached the park eventually, and that was when Link started to get properly nervous. It was a different kind of nervousness to the one that followed him around like a hound all the time. But it was still bad, and it made him definitely feel like he’d be tripping over all his words.

“So can we talk out here?” Sheik asked, after they’d been walking under the trees for a couple of minutes and any semblance of a crowd was long gone. Link nodded.

“Listen to me, and you don’t have to believe me or anything because it does sort of seem like an unbelievable story, but just do that for me,” he said, and Sheik nodded. “Listen to what I have to say and if you want to ask anything can you do it at the end? It’s a complicated story to tell.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter was 6000 words before I cut it in half akdhksjdkfhsd


	4. Tales

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Link tells Sheik everything he knows.

And he told Sheik the whole story. The legend, the players who had been there for hundreds of years, and Sheik. Sheik, who must have been there for some of it but had vanished without a trace from the historical record. Why had that happened? What had happened with all of that in the past, and why had no one preserved it to tell a future Link or a future Sheik?

He told him about how, soon, or maybe not soon, something terrible would happen in Hyrule, and Sheik would probably be there with him, and that they’d have to solve all of this and Link had no idea what to do. He barely even spoke Hylian and he was here to solve this problem that hadn’t even surfaced yet.

Sheik listened in silence, to his credit. He listened and didn’t stop listening until Link was done speaking. And when he was done speaking, he let it hang for a few moments. Just to process. To let Sheik process. To let himself process.

“That really sucks,” Sheik said. Link was sort of surprised to hear him say that. The general reaction he’d gotten from anyone who was under the age of thirty, Hylian or Sheikah, all thought that being the hero was the coolest thing ever. Link had always known that it wasn’t the coolest thing ever, and telling people that it wasn’t sort of crushed the fun they were having, imagining him as the great hero who would save them all.

“Yeah,” he managed. “So you believe me?”

“There’s no reason not to,” Sheik said. “You match my anima. That much I know. And your name is right, and...I don’t know. It feels right? I believe it because I sort of know it’s true. And what you’ve said feels like...like I’ve heard it before, sort of, but not exactly.”

“I know exactly what you mean,” he said, managing a smile. “When people were telling me about the hero, even when I was just a kid, before I even knew about any of this, it was always something that felt like I’d been told it before. Even though all the stories...there are so many of them, and there was a new one each time, and each time I was never surprised when it got to the twist or the ending.”

“Do you think it’s unusual for us to meet before you do all the hero stuff?” Sheik asked. “Because no one called Sheik comes up in the stories. It’s rare even that there’s anyone in the stories, let alone anyone male. So maybe I just...don’t normally show up until after. And that’s when we meet and we go off to have a happy life in the sunset together.”

Link glanced up to where the sun was setting along the tree line, off in the distance. He wished that were the case, but even as Sheik said it, it didn’t sound right. It made sense, which told him that it wasn’t all wrong, but somehow...he must have been erased from the stories at some point and that sort of worried Link. “I’m sorry I pulled you into it this time, then,” he said.

“Who knows?” Sheik asked, a hopeful smile on his face. “Maybe Link and Sheik and Zelda are reborn all the time and sometimes they don’t have a scary thing to face. Hyrule hasn’t been ruined in so long. Maybe the cycle just continues without Ganon and we’ll all be okay. We’ve already reached the part of our story that was the epilogue somewhere else.”

“That would be nice,” he said, cursing Sheik’s optimism to the fiery pits of hell. He wanted that to be true. He wanted it to be true so badly but he knew it wasn’t. The words just didn’t ring true for him. He knew that something was going to happen. He could feel it, because he always had the worst dreams. He knew that the hero only appeared when there was a threat to be faced.

He didn’t want that hope to be torn away from Sheik, but he knew that with time, it would be. It would have to be, because that’s just how things were now. “Let’s treat it like that for now,” Sheik said. “You’re here now! That’s really cool, honestly. You’re the hero reincarnated and you’ve found your soul partner and nothing has gone wrong yet. So we can just-”

“Sheik, I can’t sit back just because you think we’re already in the clear,” he said, as much as he hated to ruin Sheik’s mood. “There’s no reason to think that something bad won’t happen. The world isn’t as simple as that, as much as I really want it to be.”

“Okay,” Sheik said, seemingly entirely unperturbed by this suggestion being shot down. “Well, you can afford to relax a tiny bit. We can get to know each other and do things together. I can help teach you Hylian and everything will be fine. And even if it isn’t fine, you’ll be learning things that will be useful for if something bad happens.”

Link sighed, because that actually was a good idea. He was loathe to relax and give up on actively preparing, searching for what might go wrong, but he knew that he did have to stop at some point. His search hadn’t exactly been successful so far, and Sheik was right. He needed to learn Hylian or he wouldn’t get anywhere. “You’re right,” he said with a sigh.

“I know,” Sheik said, grinning. “So, do you want to go back? You can sleep in my rooms, there’s nothing wrong with that. There are spare rooms no one uses and stuff so you can use those. Then you don’t have to sleep out in the streets and you can get clean clothes and a shower and stuff.”

Link nodded, feeling slightly overwhelmed by the force of Sheik’s instantaneous planning. The boy who had just seemed so nervous before was now brimming with energy and hope and ideas and giving out things that were incredibly important to Link seemingly without even thinking about it.

Link was glad that he’d found him now. He was sad and had been sad and would probably remain worried about how Sheik felt about this. How he probably didn’t understand the gravity of all of this and how Sheik was probably going to suffer a lot in the future, but he was still glad he’d met him. Sheik was nice, and incredibly hopeful, and also rich which did help quite a lot with the logistics struggles Link had been having over the last couple of weeks.

They walked back to the steps they’d descended before with Sheik chattering the whole time and the sun setting behind them. Sheik had so much to say and none of it had the weight or importance of the things Link had just said, but he really didn’t mind. He felt like he needed endless, inane chatter right now.

Sheik talked about what he’d been studying, the drills he had to do, the events he always attended. It was another world to how Link had lived for most of his life. The only similarities were the kinds of training that Sheik had received and what he’d received from the Sheikah tribe he’d travelled with.

That was something else that Sheik had been incredibly curious about; Link’s time with the Sheikah. He’d mentioned that he’d barely ever interacted with Hylians (and Link was able to answer the question about whether people from Faron were Hylians, which they were on the whole), and that no one who couldn’t do Sheikah magic was ever trained by Sheikah.

“I can do Sheikah magic,” Link said. “It’s not normal for someone like me, someone who’s barely even a quarter Sheikah, to be able to do it because it gets passed down the male line and my grandmother was Sheikah, but that’s a whole other thing.” He’d met his two grandmothers on his father’s side for the first time when he’d lived with the tribe and that was certainly an experience.

“Sheikah...marry people who aren’t Sheikah in Faron?” Sheik asked, slight disbelief in his voice. No, it wasn’t slight. That was a completely alien concept for him and that was stranger than anything. His grandmother had married a Hylian, as had his father. It was totally normal in Faron for that to be the case because there was so many Sheikah who just gave up the nomadic life to live with a Hylian (or in the case of his grandmothers, people who gave up a fixed life).

“All the time,” he said, explaining how it had worked for his family. “It’s not usually normal to go back to the Sheikah tribe after a previous generation has left it, but I liked it there. I was picked up at one point because of how unique my case was, I guess.”

“I suppose it’s different here because we’re fixed in place,” Sheik said. “I barely leave my set of rooms, and even then I never come down here into the real world. I don’t really meet anyone I’d give up this kind of lifestyle for. I never really expected to leave the upper level much at all for...most of my life, I suppose. It’s normal to do that.”

Link nodded. That was strange, if he was being honest. Sheikah being nomadic was...a thing. They always did it, always had, and probably always would in Faron unless something really drastic happened. It was intrinsic to their culture and because of that they just...they didn’t make a fixed abode. They moved in the same kinds of patterns every year based on the seasons, sure, but he’d spent a year and a half with them and they’d never really shown signs of slowing down except when they went to large markets or gathering events.

“What was it like, living in a nomadic tribe?” Sheik asked.

“It was great,” Link said, knowing that a smile was creeping onto his face very quickly. “I sort of hated going back home once I was done with my basic training, but they’d sent me away with the purpose of travelling to Hyrule to meet Zelda because they thought she’d…”

“Oh, they wanted you to meet Zelda?” Sheik scrunched his face up. “Why?”

“They thought she’d match my anima,” he said. Why was Sheik’s reaction like that? That immediately told him something was up. “Because of the whole hero and princess thing, you know. They thought she’d be an important ally to me and all.”

“She’s really boring,” Sheik said. “She has so much to do and she’s so dull to speak to. I don’t know what it is because she mixes with everyone she meets and talks to so many people and has the best tutors in Hyrule but she’s just...really boring.”

“You’ve met her?” Link asked, and Sheik nodded.

“She comes to events in our complex all the time,” Sheik said with a shrug. “It’s a big high society thing. We’re kind of the same age, so there was a period when we weren’t cute kids but before she kind of had an adult role when we spoke quite a lot at parties and stuff.”

“Do you see her a lot now?” He asked. He knew that she wasn’t his anima adelfi or anything like that, because Sheik was and that was becoming even more clear with every passing moment, but he did need to meet her. She’d be incredibly important for his quest, when it happened, because that kind of thing...she was always in the legends. Always.

“Not so much,” he said. “She says hello to me if we see each other because she remembers me and all that. It’s about politeness and keeping connections and all of that. But I’m nowhere near important enough to be sat with her anymore and she wouldn’t go out of her way to talk to me ever.”

“So I wouldn’t be able to meet her through you,” he surmised, and Sheik shook his head.

“There’d be no use to doing it anyway,” he said. “I’d never be able to get you a private meeting with her and meeting in public...she wouldn’t recognise you or anything. Not that you would be allowed into the events or anything unless you want to tell everyone that we’re soul partners and that would bring up all kinds of problems.”

Link glanced at Sheik and remembered that he’d mentioned it wasn’t really ideal for your anima adelfi to be the same gender as you. Yes, that would definitely be a problem, considering...everything. “Yeah, that might not be the best idea,” he said. “I just wish I could meet her so she knew that this was happening.”

“I’m sure she knows,” Sheik said. “Didn’t you say that you’d been picked up by some people who knew and the they told you all about it? And if there is going to be a disaster and everything, doesn’t the princess normally dream about it and all that? I mean, at this point she’s the queen, not the princess, but you get my idea.”

“Yes, which is also why I need to meet her,” he said. “If she’s having dreams about impending disaster like I am then I know it’s not just my overactive imagination…”

“You’re having dreams about a disaster coming?” Sheik asked. “That’s, uh, not great.”

“It’s not,” Link said with a sigh. “But they’ve been happening for years at this point. They got worse after I found out I was the hero and actually better since I’ve been here in Hyrule, with a couple of exceptions. It doesn’t seem like I can actually feel how imminent it is or anything.”

“Maybe they get better as you get closer to solving any problem that might crop up,” Sheik said. “Maybe you won’t get any from now.” That was some very wishful thinking from Sheik, but he didn’t really mind. The optimism was nice to make a contrast with his own thoughts on the matter.

“I hope so,” he said, quieting his voice a little as they approached the steps to head up. “Maybe we should stop talking about it now. Go back to asking me about how it was living as a nomad again and we can talk about that.”

Sheik nodded, but didn’t say anything as they ascended the steps. He looked slightly shaky again, and Link wondered if he was scared of heights or something. But that wouldn’t make any sense, considering how high up he lived. Maybe he didn’t like climbing.

As they reached the top of the steps, there was someone coming down the corridor. “Good evening!” Sheik called to them with a wave. Link bit his lip and stood back very slightly from Sheik. Hopefully this wouldn’t be scrutinized too much.

“Good evening to you too, Sheik,” the woman said. “I thought I’d come and check in on you, and it seems I was right to think something had changed on your end. You have a visitor?”

Sheik nodded. “A friend,” he said. “Visiting Hyrule from Faron. Except he didn’t tell me he was coming or when he’d be here until now, so he’s a bit later than I was expecting.”

The woman eyed Link with suspicious eyes. “I see,” she said. “I don’t remember you mentioning you were expecting a visitor. Or that you knew anyone from Faron or anything about them.”

“Is that a problem?” Sheik asked, and his voice was so light and sweet that Link almost...it was definitely a tone that was trying to tell this woman to leave him alone now. Sheik had run out of lies.

“No,” the woman said. “Just make sure you’re still attending all your lessons. And you can’t bring him, even if he can do magic.”

“No one suggested that,” Sheik said. Link hadn’t been planning on dropping in on Sheik’s real life at all. Though he sort of was a part of Sheik’s real life. And he hadn’t had any plans to do with this until Sheik had suggested it half an hour ago.

“Good,” the woman said, and then she turned around and walked in the direction she’d come from. Sheik breathed a very heavy sigh of relief but didn’t say anything until they’d walked all the way to his rooms.

“She knows something,” Sheik said immediately, and Link nodded, because it was so obvious that she’d known something was up. Obvious enough that it was at least clear she wasn’t trying to hide it. She may have even been actively trying to show that she knew just so Link and Sheik knew she knew something. But to what purpose?

“She knew that I was here,” Link said. “And from being in my presence she knew I could do magic, which isn’t exactly unusual or anything, but…” Most Sheikah could detect people’s magical signal without even trying, but Link had imagined that it was more likely that the Sheikah here, shut ins as they were, would have noticed an absence of magic more than the presence of it. “And she knew that I was planning on staying.”

“How did she know?” Sheik asked, and from the phrasing Link could tell it wasn’t a question he expected to be answered. “They don’t record in my room, they don’t pry. So how did they know?”

“I think you might have to entertain the possibility that they were prying and they knew that this happened because someone saw it or they do have a camera in here somehow,” Link said. This had him on edge and he was now very, very glad that he’d taken Sheik elsewhere to talk to him about all of this. Or maybe they already knew all of that too and they’d just been keeping it from him.

“No,” Sheik said. “I trust Impa. Everyone trusts Impa, she’s incredibly up front and honest about everything that needs to be known. Her acting like that...she was probably telling us to be suspicious? Telling us that people knew and weren’t going to say?”

“But that means she knew too,” he said.

“The difference is that she told us that she knew,” Sheik said. “She told us and I trust her, partially because of that. She wouldn’t lie to me.”

“But if she knows what’s going on and now decided to let you know about it, then surely she knew what was going on before and opted not to tell you about it,” Link said. “She probably- when’s your next lesson? You train with her?”

“Yes,” Sheik said. “My next lesson with her is tomorrow morning. One on one combat training.”

“She wants to talk to you about me on your own,” he said. “That’s why she’s making sure you don’t bring me. Because it’s something she wants to say that’s about me.”

Sheik nodded, a thoughtful look on his face. “Maybe she’ll explain it to me,” he said. “And say what’s going on.”

A sudden fear crossed Link’s mind that she might do more than talk to Sheik, and Sheik might be in danger from someone who was clearly very senior to him and incredibly able. But he knew he shouldn’t say anything, because why would he? Sheik trusted her. If he suggested that he shouldn’t trust Impa...in one scenario, Sheik would be annoyed, or upset with him for suggesting that she couldn’t be trusted. But if Sheik didn’t trust her, and then he went to the session prepared to defend himself...even worse things could happen.

It was getting harder and harder to envision things going well, or working out well, and it was exhausting and terrifying and Link was afraid for Sheik, afraid for himself, afraid for Hyrule...he didn’t want to die, he didn’t want to fail, he didn’t want to suffer, and he really, really didn’t want Sheik to suffer on his behalf. He didn’t deserve this.


	5. Discoveries

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sheik talks to Impa and tries to work out what she knows.

Sheik went to the training session nervous, if he was being honest. Link had still been asleep when he got up at dawn and got ready; at least, Sheik hadn’t heard any stirring from him from where he was sleeping in the other room. The room that was meant to be his and now he was thinking about all of that which was never a good thing to be thinking about before training. Impa would not be pleased at all.

He knew that Link had been worried about him going to train with Impa. He hadn’t wanted Sheik to know, but he could tell that the other boy was very paranoid about what might happen. Sheik knew, because everyone was afraid of Impa. That’s just how it went. He didn’t blame Link for that, but he also knew better.

When he entered the usual room, Impa sprung at him before the door was even closed, shutting it behind her as she whipped him around and started their initial match. She did this every day to help him warm up, except she’d long expected him to warm up on his own and she always got annoyed at him if he wasn’t at top performance at seven in the morning. Which was honestly unreasonable if you asked him, but he didn’t get to have a say in that.

When the match was done, inevitably ending fairly quickly with him pinned to the ground, Impa let him up. “Your mind is drifting,” she said. “I know you have things on your mind, Sheik, but you can’t let it stop your work. Especially as now you know why the training is important.”

“So you do know,” he said, and she nodded before jumping at him again, starting another match. So this was how it was going to go, then. Well, Sheik would just have to work to end the matches quickly and hope she would tell him more if he performed well.

“I’ve known for a while now,” she said, effortlessly keeping up her movements, practically tying him up in knots. She could overpower him in moments if she wanted to, but she always did this instead.

“Why didn’t you tell me?” He asked. He didn’t know how he was meant to manage talking and fighting at the same time, but he would have to if he wanted this conversation to have any kind of coherence. He just wanted to get as much information as he could from her in any way he could, so if Impa was going to give him information on these terms then that was fine with him.

“Because there was no reason to,” she said. “He hadn’t arrived yet. There’s nothing to be gained from distracting you with worries about your future. It was always my plan to tell you once he appeared from wherever he’d ended up this time.”

“Does that mean that it wasn't other people’s plans?” He asked, knowing that this probably wasn’t a question Impa was willing to answer. She didn’t like to talk about all the formal decision making that tended to happened behind his back, behind everyone’s back. Everyone knew that Impa was involved in that kind of thing, of course, because if there was anyone who would be then it was her, but she didn’t like admitting it and she definitely wouldn’t share the kinds of things that were being discussed or who had what opinions.

“No,” she said. “People wanted to keep you in the dark for as long as possible so you could be safe. There was always the possibility that he would conduct everything without telling you a word of the truth, specifically for the same reason as we had for not telling you.”

“That wouldn’t make me safer!” He said. Not knowing just meant he was more likely to stumble into something dangerous while he just wasn't prepared and that was wrong. It was so wrong to just keep him in the dark like that. That was exactly why Link had told him what was going on.

“We were going to ask him to not say anything too,” Impa said. “But by the time we realised that you had encountered him, you’d already gone elsewhere and the power was out of their hands. It’s up to you to prove to them that this was a good thing that happened.”

“Whether it’s good or not, surely it’s out of their hands now?” He asked. Impa shook her head, and twisted his arm around, stopping him from moving.

“It will never be entirely out of their hands or out of their power,” she said. “They have a lot of power and influence up here, as you very well know, and they already threatened to cut my connection with you so I couldn’t talk to you about this or give either of you advice.”

“Did you want to give him advice too?” Sheik asked, thinking about all the things Impa couldn’t tell Link that may or may not help him. One thing she’d attempted and actually failed to hide in the last couple of years was that she was in regular contact with the now-queen Zelda. Maybe she could help him on that front.

“It’s been my role for a fair while now,” Impa said. “You wouldn’t remember. But some day you might get a glimpse of it, it works differently every time.”

“You mean…” Sheik traced the symbol of the anima onto his chest. Impa nodded, and let him go so he could move again.

“I’m no soul partner of the hero,” she said with a laugh. “In fact, he tends not to like me all that much. You may have noticed. But I fit into this tale on the sidelines, much like you always have.”

“You know how I fit into all of this in the past?” He asked. This time, he initiated the fight, even though his muscles were still aching from her iron grip.

“I do,” Impa said, and then she stopped speaking. She’d been so forthcoming until now, and it was only when Sheik asked a question like this that she held back on him? The thing that maybe no one else knew, because Link certainly didn’t know about it, and she wasn’t telling him anything.

“So how do I fit?” He asked. He needed to know. He needed to know if he was right about usually coming about after everything was said and done.

“You’ll have to discover that yourself,” Impa said, and the force of his surprise at that meant Impa overpowered him within moments. “This is exactly why we were told not to tell you about this,” she said. “It distracts you. It clouds your mind with desire of something you cannot yet have. It is something you have to find from within yourself, Sheik. So stop pestering me and work towards finding it.”

“How do I do that?” He asked. He didn’t know how he could find memories from a past life. That wasn’t even possible, was it?

“Spend time with him. Do the things you are meant to do, because that is how you fit into this life,” Impa told him, squaring up for another fight. Wearily, Sheik lowered his own stance to ready himself for her approach. “By seeing how you fit here, the way you fit before will gradually be revealed to you.”

From there, she said nothing more, and Sheik didn’t really know how to respond, either. They fought a final match, Impa constantly dancing around him. He fought worse than usual, for sure, but it was the best match he’d done today and that was probably what counted most at this point

“Bring him to your next session with me,” Impa said. “We can talk more then. Until then, keep him away from others. They probably wouldn’t get along with a quarter Sheikah boy from Faron who has no reason to be here that you want to share.”

**Author's Note:**

> If you happen to have enjoyed this, please leave a comment! :) it means a lot.


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